Some thoughts on the “queer Confiteor” promoted by Fr. Martin’s “Outreach”

The folks over at Catholic Answers asked me to write something about a recent and quite scandalous essay posted on the “LGBTQ Catholic Ministry” Outreach site.

Here is the opening of my essay:

The “LGBTQ Catholic Ministry” Outreach, founded in 2022 by James Martin, S.J., recently offered the following queer-friendly “adaptation” of the Confiteor:

“I confess to our Loving God
and to you, my siblings,
That I have fallen short
in my prejudiced thoughts and my biased judgements
in my careless words and my degrading self-talk
in what I have done to cooperate with injustice
and in what I have failed to do to resist it;
Through my fear, through my complacency, through my worst errors.
Therefore I ask all my spiritual ancestors, queer saints,
and you, the human family,
to pray with me,
that together we might build a better tomorrow.
Amen.”

This prayer comes from an article called “An LGBTQ Catholic guide to the Mass: Praying the Confiteor,” authored by Ariell Watson Simon, who describes herself as “queer” and lives in Missouri with her “wife.” Her essay “begins a series that explores praying with the Mass from an LGBTQ perspective.”

And then, I write:

Simon, like Martin, relies heavily upon—indeed, is deeply rooted in—a therapeutic mentality. Eduardo Echeverria, in a two-part Catholic World Report essay that critiques Martin’s ministry and his bestselling book Building a Bridge (HarperOne, 2017), describes the therapeutic mentality as

“a gospel of personal happiness in which happiness rests on the justification of self-authenticating experiences. This therapeutic way of life is pervasive throughout the domain of, for example, homosexual sexual experiences in which ‘no criteria of validity [for those experiences is offered] other than the therapeutic experience of conviction.’ (The partial quote is from Christendom Awake [1999] by Aidan Nichols, O.P.)”

Put another way, it’s the belief that feelings and experience are the first and final ground of truth and reality. Thus, Simon writes of how, when she “first came out as an LGBTQ Catholic,” she recoiled at saying, “I have greatly sinned.” Why? Because she was concerned that those around her at Mass might think “queerness is a great sin.” But, she says, “I don’t believe that my sexuality is wrong. I’m proud of who I am.” A problem, she insists, is that there is an “overemphasis on sexual morality in our tradition.”

We hardly need to be theologians to recognize the ideological and deeply secular nature of Simon’s attempt to pervert the words and focus of the Confiteor:

“I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. Therefore, I ask Blessed Mary ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”

In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, we Eastern Catholics pray the following before receiving Holy Communion:

“O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first. . . . O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. O Lord, forgive me, for I have sinned without number.”

The intent, in both the East and the West, is acknowledging that I am a sinner, in constant need of mercy and conversion. Period.

Furthermore, implicit in these prayers is a fact that cannot be erased, even if Martin, Simon, and company seek to do so: it is Jesus Christ and his Church who tell us what is sinful and what is good—not our emotions, passions, or desires, no matter how strongly they press upon us. As Nichols writes, “it is not experience we should trust but the transmutation of experience by Scripture and Tradition.”

Read my entire essay at Catholic.com.